The 3 Phases of the Soulpreneur Journey -- and making it all worthwhile :)

Is it possible to make money doing what you love? Absolutely. I'm grateful that I am one example of that concept. I love my work so much today and I make good money doing it, but it wasn't always the case. And wherever you are in that journey right now, I want to encourage you that, yes, you will get there if you stick with it. And what if you don't have to wait to love what you do? So that's what this video is about. Let's have a heart to heart talk about the journey there, whatever there means. Because by the way, even after you have manifested or built a life in a business that you love so much that there are still hard parts, there are still challenges, it's just a different level of challenge and a different level of, some people might say suffering, but doesn't have to be suffering. It's just simply a gap that you feel between where you are and what could be even more purposefully aligned, shall we say, what could be even greater. So wherever you are, there is always going to be, you know, as a human being who wants to evolve, who wants to become better, there's always going to be more. And even where you are right now, let's just take a moment to appreciate that where you are right now compared to where you were in the past before, you have learned all the things you've learned to get to this point before you have built habits, some good habits, and yes, we all have bad habits that we're also working on releasing and replacing with good habits. But where you are now is to be appreciated. Otherwise you will not be able to step forward from a footing of gratitude and of a positive mindset. I would prefer that, I would hope that you could step forward from optimism and from gratitude rather than from a kind of a struggling hustle that hates where you are now. I mean, that could work for some people and it has worked for a lot of people to, to, to just move from hate and from, from disdain for their current situation. But there is no guarantee that anybody, including you, will get there wherever there is that you envision. But there is a guarantee that you have to take the journey. So you might as well take the journey every single day from a more positive, secure mindset. And so let's talk about what that means. First of all, I'm speaking mostly to solopreneurs, fellow solopreneurs, who want to grow a soulful career, a soulful livelihood, true livelihood, where you are using your gifts, your passions, your talents in service of the growth of others and of Yourself as well, a kind of business that feels really, really authentic to you and not just about making money, but where every day when you show up, you feel like you are meeting the, your soul's purpose. You are taking the hero's journey that you really want to be on. Okay, so that is what. Those are the people I'm speaking to. Those are the people who are, who are aiming for that, that experience. And I, like I said, I'm grateful to have that experience every day, but I'll tell you, it's not always been there. And let me just kind of quickly outline the three step journey that I, that I see this, this experience as being from here to there. Okay? Particularly again for solopreneurs, Step, step three in the journey. Let's just, we'll start with the end in mind so you can be encouraged for, for what's to come. Step three in the journey is where you selling whatever you love to sell, whatever service you love to provide, whatever product program you love to have people enroll into and enjoy from you. You are making good money selling the thing you love to do for with others. How you like to play with your clients, work with your clients, help them transform, solve their problems, help them reach goals, give them some kind of experience. Stage three is where you are. You are doing that. You're making good money doing that. All right, stage two. Okay, so let's, let's kind of back up a little bit here. And I have, I have a few notes that I might be looking at before you get there. Stage two. Okay, so, so I'll let me bookend the, the journey for you. Stage three is you're making money selling what you love. Okay, so your pageant, your passion projects are sell well. Okay, that's stage three. Stage one is maybe where you are now. And where you are now is where you don't maybe have an audience or you don't have a big enough audience where you could just say what you want to sell and they buy it. They buy what you want to sell them in droves. Like I said, I'm grateful that I've gotten here to this point where I have a big enough of a true fan audience where I can just sell what I want to sell and I get enough, enough sales for. But stage one, where I started, just like perhaps many of you are, is no audience or a small audience. And here is where if you sell what you want to sell, you probably won't get enough people buying it. So what must, what must you do? Let's be clear about the truth. Your income. Because I'm assuming you are you. Are you. What you. What you sell isn't. Isn't just for free, because selling something for free is easier. It's sometimes not even that easy. If it's just what you want to get for free and people aren't even engaging with it, but selling what you feel like selling for money, you have to understand that your income comes from other people. I know that sounds so basic. Or it's like, what is that supposed to mean? Your income comes from the decisions of other people to spend their money with you. So in other words, your income doesn't just come from your. Your law of attraction manifestation to say, all right, the manifest $2,000, 5,000, $10,000 today. And then you open your computer and there's 2,000, 5,000, 10,000. Okay, maybe there are some masters of manifestation that have gotten to that stage, but most of us go through the practical stages of understanding, oh, if I sell what other people want, then, and they buy it, that's where I get my money. So in other words, stage one is not selling what you want because you don't have enough of a true fan audience. Stage one is selling what they want. Now, who's they? They are the people you can currently reach. You might say, I don't have an audience, George. No, no, no. All of us have an audience. Even whatever stage you're at, who is your audience right now? The people that you can reach and the people that they can refer to you. So your friends, colleagues, classmates, former classmates, former colleagues, you know, acquaintances, maybe even family. Now, I'm not saying you're going to go to your friends and family, please buy this from me. But what you do is you go to the people you can already reach. Your network, your existing network might not be thousands, but you probably have at least 50, 100 Facebook friends or 50 or 100 LinkedIn contacts. Or just looking at your. Your phone book and looking at the people that you have send text messages to that you've emailed. Really look at the people you've emailed and send text messages to. These are the people that you and who reply back to you. These are the people that you can already reach. Now, they might be ending up being some of your first customers and clients, or they might refer people who become your first customers and clients. Okay, so the people you can already reach are a rich source of market understanding. What do I mean by that? Remember, your income comes from the market. Your income comes from people, other human beings. The market, your market is the expenditures of the people you're able to reach, the people you know, the money that they're spending every day. That's your market. Now, technically, your market is the portion of the money that they're spending. That's similar to what you could provide is your market. And also your market is also the spending of all of their connections. If you have 50 friends and they all have 50 friends each on average, or 50 people that they can reach, okay, that they would, that would respond to them. Friends, acquaintances, that's 2,500 people. Just do the math, right? You've got 50 friends or 50 people who would respond to you, who would know who you are. Friends, colleagues, classmates. And then they have 50 people on average per person. That's 2500 people. That's more clients than you can work with. Now, of course, not all 2500 are the right fit, but some of those 2500 are. So you start at stage one with selling what they want. Now, of course, you, in the universe of the ways that they're spending their money, there are some of it where you're like, oh, I could provide that kind of service too, or they want to spend their money doing this, but they can't find the right provider. They have had a bad experience with someone else. But you can provide that. At the beginning you need to be humble, right? Hopefully you can practice humility all throughout the journey, but especially at the beginning. Humility is a key lesson to say, sure, vision is a key lesson, but so is humility to say, I must sell what they want to buy. So I need to talk with them about the various things I could provide. What are they spending money on? And you're not going to sell them, right? Right away, perhaps, but you go, how could I provide my version of that? Okay, so that's stage one, right? You, if you want to make money at stage one, maybe you're not in a hurry, then you can go to stage two. Ok? Or, or the other way, by the way, is you could sell something of what you really enjoy, but at a price that's so easy for them. In the beginning, that might be zero because people might not be willing to pay for your life coaching or whatever yet because they're like, ah, you're, you know, you don't have any credibility. You know, I don't, you know, so it might be zero, might be much lower than you want to charge in the future, but they need to experience it to go, oh, wow, this is really powerful. This is really good stuff. Okay. And Then when you raise your price, they're like, sure, absolutely, it's, it's worth it, right? So in the beginning, you either sell what they want you to sell at a price that's the market price, or you sell what you want to sell, but at a price. It's so easy for them. It's easy for them, for them to say yes so that they can experience it. And then they could, you could raise the price in three months from now and six months from now, et cetera. Keep raising the price right until you're super, super happy with the price. Step stage two, stage one is sell what they want, okay? Or at a price that's easy for them. Stage two is while you're doing that, if you need to make money, if not, then jump right to stage two. You are growing a true fan audience by posting authentic content, expressing your energy, signature, as I like to say, you are doing it consistently to, in service to your audience, sharing helpful information, inspiring information, and sharing it from your own authentic self. Video is a great way of doing it, but writing as well. And by doing this consistently, you start to notice what people resonate with. Of all the pieces of content you post, they certain they resonate with certain ones. And then you make more content like that. Remember, sell what they want, you give them what they want, right? But you start by just posting on things that you believe they might find helpful, that you found helpful. And from your own inspirational perspective, your own unique perspective, you notice what's resonating and you do more of that. And then that by doing that, you grow more of a true fan audience. Then you can move eventually into phase three, which is you can sell what you want, whatever you want to sell, at the price you want to sell it. And you have enough true fans, enough credibility with them that you'll get enough sales. So that's the basic three step journey of a solopreneur. And then back to the original question. How can we make the entire journey worthwhile and enjoyable? Joyful productivity rather than just, well, I'll grit my teeth and do stage one and stage two and then when I, once I get to the future stage three, then I'll be happy, then I can be positive, then I can be really aligned with my soul. No, no, right now, today, whatever it is you are doing in stage one or stage two, that thing, task, project you're doing can be done with your values. So that's the key. The key is to ask yourself, what values am I bringing to each day in my work? This is Something that I often do in my work retreats. I facilitate these work retreats for my group members where we get together several times a week, oftentimes twice a day during the weekdays. And at the beginning of the work retreat, we're all going to work quietly. But I always tell them, all right, set your intention for what you're going to do this hour. But just as importantly, what is the spirit word that you are working with? What's a spirit word? It's just a fancy word for values. What value are you bringing to this hour of work? Are you bringing courage? Are you bringing trust? Are you bringing peace? Are you bringing love? I mean, really, it's like whatever it is you're doing, there may. There's some value that you hold dear that can be practiced in that action. So, for example, when I'm making this video right now, I could take it from several points of view. I could say, okay, I just got to get this video done. You know, I got. Just got to say the thing and then, and then try to make it as entertaining as possible, get it done and move on to the next thing. That's the, you might say that's the getting things done mentality. I just got to get it done, move to the next thing, try to do it as efficiently as possible, then move on. And that's fine. Now, some people might value that, and that's what they're practicing. I'm not going to judge what value you're going to bring to that moment. Right. That's not my value. Might be someone else's, and that's great. They're, they're, they're growing that particular muscle and then that's, that's, that's what they need to do right now. Fine. What I prefer to do, what makes my soul sing, is if I can say I am making this video with as much heart as possible, I hope that this video will be of genuine service to somebody who finds it in the future or, or soon, whenever. I genuinely pray that this expenditure of my energy that I'm spending my time right now, I'm spending my energy that this expenditure of energy is moving forward. The divine will I, I. That's my genuine hope and aim and value that I bring to this very moment of making this video, you know, and part of that moving forward of the divine will is also. This expenditure of energy is somehow also helping me connect more deeply, even in a tiny way, connect again with my divine source so that I can be more at one with my divine source. So that's the value I'm bringing to this moment, this task. Another example, let's say I'm doing my bookkeeping. Okay? Now, bookkeeping, it's like, well, most people just say, well, I just want to get it done, just doing my bookkeeping, be efficient as possible, get it done, try not to make mistakes. And then they might try to make things more enjoyable by listening to some music or whatever. That's great. Whatever value you're practicing, I hope that you will practice it with some intentionality so that, you know, you are not just doing the thing, but you are growing in some way. That's the key. Right? So when I'm doing my bookkeeping, what am I practicing? I'm practicing gratitude, and I'm practicing curiosity. And so what do I mean by that? So, like, when I'm doing bookkeeping, I'm looking at a number. I spent money on something. I'm grateful. I mean, literally, I look at the line item, oh, I, I spent money for this service. Oh, then I take a moment. So I'm, I'm grateful that that service exists. Thank that person, company, you know, service provider for allowing me to, to use this service because it's of benefit to me in some way. So I'm like, grateful for that line item, right? Like, instead of. So that makes my bookkeeping already more heartful and itself a worthwhile experience because it's an experience of the soul rather than just, ah, just doing numbers. Get, get it done. Right. You know, and curiosity. If I, if I look at a line, I'm like, I don't even know what that is. Rather than being frustrated and go, what is this? This is a, a fraud or what happened here or, or what did my wife spend on? You know, because we know our bookkeeping is kind of combined, so we help each other out with that. I get curious like, oh, I'm wondering what that, what that's about and, and how that provided some benefit to, to one of us or both of us. So I, I use that curiosity. I practice that curiosity. Oh, okay. What, what is that? And I might ask my wife or I might look into my own emails to figure out what that was. And, but I'm practicing curiosity there rather than, you know, some, you know, some kind of negative surprise or something like that. Right? So those are just two quite different examples of how the entire journey, whatever task you're doing today is part of the journey of hopefully these may, perhaps these three stages you're taking or whatever business plan you have overall, but whatever task it is that you're doing in front of you can be blessed, can be made meaningful and even magical as an experience when you bring the intentionality of what I call a spirit word, you know, like curiosity or gratitude or, you know, service, love connection. So I hope this makes sense. I hope that, well, if I can give you an actionable step to take right now is what is it you're doing next as part of your work? What work task are you doing next? Now look at that work task and say, well, how can I bring some more of my value or spirit word into this task? Like George has mentioned, how can I make this task more meaningful rather than just the default mode might be to just get it done right? How can I make this moment if I'm going to spend precious energy, precious life energy in this moment for an hour, half hour, whatever it may be, how might that expenditure of energy be truly worthwhile? I wish for you that experience every day and if you want to do that exercise, I look forward to seeing your comments below. If you'd like to add, okay, this is the task and this is one simple way I can make it more meaningful. I welcome that. So with that, I wish you truly joyful productivity as you take this solopreneur journey towards the vision that you aim for. Be well. Thanks for joining me.